


Dying With Him

by LeastExpected_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Het, M/M, Points of View
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-02-04
Updated: 2002-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26274091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeastExpected_Archivist/pseuds/LeastExpected_Archivist
Summary: By Kassandra.Legolas reflects on his life.
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Arwen Undómiel, Aragorn | Estel/Legolas Greenleaf
Kudos: 2
Collections: Least Expected





	Dying With Him

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Amy Fortuna, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Least Expected](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Least_Expected), which has been offline since 2002. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Least Expected collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/leastexpected/profile).
> 
> Warnings: Het Content  
> Disclaimer: All belongs to Tolkien.  
> Story Notes: Dedicated to Jenn, devoted Tolkien fan, beta-reader and friend. Without her suggestions this story would only be half as good. Thank you :)

The world is dying with him. 

I stand here, looking over the white buildings of Minas Tirith that gleam beautifully in the slow dawning of the sun, and while my hands grip the cold marble of the balustrade I wonder why my life has taken this path. 

More than three thousand years of existence, but tonight I cannot seem to shake off the feeling that I only started living for real the day I met him. I am cursed with the most vivid memory, and although more than a century ago that moment stands out in my mind the way others rarely do. 

In the past there were days of fear, uncertainty, loss and the endless shedding of blood, and yet I long for them again. I cherish from those days the reminders of loyalty and the deepening bond between us. The memory of the warmth relayed in those eyes, aglow with the dim light from our little campfire. How keenly I relive the coldest, darkest winter nights tempered by the scent and heat of his hard form pressed into mine. The honor I felt, and the pleasurable privilege of providing a desperate comfort to his aching mind and body. Finally, the taste of his kiss... still it lingers, catching my breath and flushing my cheeks. But it all transpired in utter darkness and absolute silence, and I am not sure that any of it meant more to him than a brief respite from the solitude of our hearts and the feeling of no tomorrow while we touched each other like ghosts, heated only by what could never be. 

I cannot find it in myself to regret those nights, for they became the only moments I could allow myself to reflect, to remember that I am more than arms that wield knife and bow and more than eyes that look beyond the sea. 

That I am also a lover. 

I might not feel regret but what I do feel is bitterness. Bitterness for my heart fell foolishly in love with something that was not mine to have, and of all the things I have desired in my long life and could have attained, this one already belonged to someone else. I could never find the strength or cruelty to try and change that. As it stands, the heaviest burden now lies on Arwen's shoulders, because after all he was only ever hers. 

The day they married was a beautiful one, and even now it makes me wonder that I somehow thought it might be raining while my lover was being given someone else's hand. When he looked at me there was such sadness in his eyes, and my heart was filled with pain for I did not want him to be unhappy but also did not know what to do. I thought that he had everything he wanted. 

We did not speak to each other after that for a long time. Joyless years I journeyed restlessly through all the lands of Middle Earth, trying to escape from the memories I carried within me. Finally, weary of all the lonely travels, I found myself back in Minas Tirith, the White City. I was greeted like a lost brother, and lost I did feel. Streaks of frost now lit his hair, but the years had been kind. He held an infant girl on his arms, and the moment his eyes met mine I knew that my running had been in vain. 

That very night he came to me, whispering in the dark how much he had missed me, how I must never leave him again. As he slept in my arms, I wondered about Arwen, about loneliness and hopeless love. His hands now were clean, the hands of a king and father, gone was the smell of sweat and leather that had marked him as mine. 

Many years have passed since my return to him, and with few exceptions I have spent them here, wandering this beautiful city, studying ancient texts to keep connected to my own past. Mankind has an almost obsessive need to write things down, but then this is not a surprise with people who live barely a century and can only remember things from a few decades past, and then with difficulty. But then, that may be one of their blessings. There were moments when I have missed my people so deeply that I thought I would break, but in the night when Arwen would come to me, singing softly and enveloping me in her soft arms and heart, she would dispel the sharpest pain to the darkness so I could bear the rest. 

I have grown used to the company of mortals, marvelling again and again at their heartfelt pain over someone passing away. I have seen so many of them die, strangers and friends, and I have come to loathe the concept of mortality. They have barely had a taste of life when they are called away again, going to their legendary halls of ancestors that might not even exist. But then, I sometimes think that I envy them. Although they have to leave the world after such a short span of time, for a few precious years they burn brighter than my people ever do. Their passion and love of life that springs from the knowledge of their finite existence still captivates me as it has the first time I set my eyes upon one of them. 

Despite all the deaths I have witnessed, nothing has prepared me for his death. Nothing wil remain as it is now, and was while he lived. Nothing for me, for Gondor, for the world. The age of myth and legend draws to a close, and as I feel the winter approaching with its already chilling breezes and falling leaves, it seems hardly possible that long years back my heart was filled with something else than sadness or acceptance of the inevitable. 

The streets of the city are empty in these early morning hours, but in front of my mind's eye I conjure the image and sound of them as I have seen them day after day for over a century. Crowded with people, pursuing their business, shouting and laughing and... living. Into these voices, voices of those long gone weave together, echoing in my ears. Men and Elves I left behind on the blood-soaked battlefields. Friends and kin that I abandoned by choosing to live a life among mankind, though I even knew back then that in the end there would be nothing left for me but grief. 

With all my eternal youth and beauty, I cannot not prolong his life, and for me this is the greatest cruelty of all. The blood of Nmenor flows strongly through his veins, but even this strength has to finally come to an end. I find it ironic that my people are permitted to give up their own immortality but not to gift it to another. But then, I do understand the reason for it. It cannot be for the Elves to be the only ones that do not suffer from heartbreak and loss. Although we are the most perfect creatures in everything else, this one thing makes us painfully equal to all the others. 

I remember a night some few years back when he and I stood here on the Tower of Ecthelion where I stand now, and he gently took my hand and put it over his heart under the velvet robe. He said that I shall never understand his love for me, for it is like the love for the mountains or the sea, for eternal things that have been there long before him and will be there long after he is gone. It pained me to hear him speak like that, for I did not want his worship. I wanted his passion, his warm flesh beneath my mouth and fingers and his soft moans of pleasure that made me smile with the knowledge that I had caused them. 

And he was wrong. I understood very well. With his words he made me feel a stranger. In the world of Men, in this city, in his bed. I wondered whether he had told Arwen the same things. But then she had given up her immortality. Maybe that is what he always held against me. That I was not ready to do the same thing. To make this incredible sacrifice. 

But in a way I did. Most of my people have sailed into the West. Few now are left on these shores, and those that have lingered are far away. Middle Earth is left to mankind now, the Elven dwellings all but deserted and left for the land to reclaim them, to erase every last trace of our existence from the surface of the earth. 

My whole being aches for the Sea, the memory of the voices of the gulls setting my heart on fire with longing. It has asked almost too much of me to stay, since I first heard their soulful, mourning cries on my travels years ago. When my toes dug into the soft white sand, and the warm breeze played with my hair and all I could think of was him, for he is the only reason for me to stay. A reason strong enough to keep me here although I am alone but for one sister that is not related to me in blood, but in heart and soul. 

I wonder does he ever think of what he has demanded of me? Does he know what staying behind with him has meant for me? How my heart cried out to my people long gone to the Undying Lands? How the sweet smell of the ocean filled my senses and left me breathless with yearning? Does he know? 

In these last hours I imagine he does. I desperately cling to the knowledge that he appreciates all that I have done and all that I have not done. That he treasures the sacrifices that I have made and all the things I gave him that she could not give him. 

But above all else I hope he knows that I love him. And that he will take this knowledge with him to his afterlife, if there truly is one. 

It is time. I see it on her face, as Arwen comes to me. He has asked me to stay by him in the end, but I could not grant him this last wish. I could not bear his ashen face in which the eyes still burnt with the same fire, his mind behind them still sharp and clear. I could not bear seeing him pass away by his own choice, knowing what - who - he was leaving behind and yet choosing to do so. 

She takes my hand and kisses it gently, for she knows that we have both loved him to the very end, and she does not hold it against me. She looks weary, for her own choice must weigh upon her heavily, just as it does on me. The first gleam of sunlight catches in her dark hair, and a few streaks seem to already be kissed by the coming of winter. 

We must look so strange to the people of this city, she and I. All through the turn of the seasons, the passing of the years, we have never changed. No loss, no grief seems to ever have an effect on us. They must think us cold, those mortals. Cold and untouchable with our white skin and unfathomable eyes and voices that speak of a sea and distant land none of them has ever seen or will ever see. 

But none of this matters anymore. She and I, we are among the last of our kind that still linger in Middle Earth. When all of us are gone it will only take a few centuries, and the Elves will have passed out of all knowledge. We will be forgotten, and with us our lore and our songs. Elessar is the last of the great Elf-friends, the last great king of the Nmenorean line, and with him all memory of the old alliance between Mankind and Elves will be lost. The destiny of the kin of Elendil has fulfilled itself. Elessar has brought a time of prosperity and peace to his people, and there is scarcely anyone still alive who remembers that all of this has been bought with the blood of countless beings. 

Arwen remembers, and her eyes are so sad when she looks at me that it grieves me that none of my words can give her any solace. I know how she feels, for I feel it, too. 

The world is dying with him. 

And so are we. 

**THE END**


End file.
